Felt Map of the World

Having been raised in five countries spread across three continents, it’s important to me that my children know as much about their world as possible. I thought this felt board map of the world activity could be a fun introduction to continents. Inspired by a high school history teacher who forced all of his students to learn to draw simplified maps of the world and Europe, I created a template based off of this map from http://www.mapsofworld.com/. I cut the simplified continents out of felt and made a new blue-background travel felt board. I also laminated (very poorly, I’m afraid) a print-out of the same map. I will keep the laminated map and the felt pieces in a folder, within a larger folder that holds all of Emma’s felt board activities. I’m not sure how well Emma understands the concepts of continents (or even the world) at this point, but she enjoys playing with the felt pieces, looking at the map, and talking about where various friends and family members live. Here’s the world map template I created, if you would like to try this activity yourself.

Emma asked to trace the map of the world. She did a great job, in spite of using thick printer paper. Anyone know where to buy tracing paper?

She even added some animals to the world (after I took the above picture) – here’s her version of a baby fox:

and a sheep:

Here is another fun way to teach your children about the world – all from the comfort of your own home!

Wow! That is really cool. And a great learning tool for your daughter. I might have to try something like that. I’d love to teach my kids a little bit about geography. I got a puzzle of the US for them but they lost all the pieces. Maybe I could make one out of felt.

@J – Yeah, I had to leave off quite a few island countries, with Iceland being the largest. I also debated over whether or not to cut out the bay that separates Greenland from Canada… It’s definitely an imperfect map, but it gives the basic shapes of the continents.

I love this idea. I also love to expose my kids to world geography and I think it interests them, too, since they have grandparents in Asia.

Do you have any special tricks for storing Emma’s felt activities?

Also, thank you so much for your comment on my blog about fitting 3 car seats in your car. I’ve just started watching a friend’s son 2 days a week, so I’m going to need to figure out 3 car seats in our car a lot sooner than I thought!